


round the city, round the clock

by qunsio



Category: Luke Cage (TV)
Genre: Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 00:12:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8555155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunsio/pseuds/qunsio
Summary: Misty imagined he’d lay back for Claire on her fresh white sheets, and she, wine-drunk and sated, the taste of roast lamb and gravy at the back of her mouth, she would pick each straining button of his shirt until he lay spread open before her. Her hands, spread across his dark chest and sinking in like cedar roots. Her dress, rising up, her heavy thighs growing longer and longer inch by sliding inch.--Claire gets Misty on Snapchat. She didn't realize how much Misty can gather from a picture.





	

**Author's Note:**

> post-season 1 but ignoring all the setup for next season

Luke Cage glowed, shifting planes of light off the swell of his arms, the flat of his back, the curve of his cheek. Made you want to hold him, tight, to see if your fingers would sink into him. He was a fortress, impenetrable, but somehow, looking at him, you’d feel certain you could fall straight into him if you had the chance to try.

At least, that was how Misty imagined Claire felt.

She had sent Misty a picture of Luke, sprawled across a threadbare sofa, his face clear and glowing, one hand on his stomach, the other holding a mug of coffee, which he examined with an expression of great skepticism. Misty could see the two of them, holed up in Claire’s small apartment on a chilly Saturday afternoon, palms warm around their mugs. Claire would crack a window to let the acidic smell of cheap coffee dissipate, then huddle up next to Luke to ward off the cold. With the blinds open, they could leave the lights off and let the the sun light the room, clear and white. Claire would sip her coffee, watching Luke’s glowing face, but Luke would not drink his coffee. He would look intently at the frayed neckline of Claire’s sweater. The grey, slouchy one, Misty thought. That was what Claire wore when she was called out on short notice, and so probably what she wore at home. Luke would like it, the way he could pull the scooping neckline to the side and bare her neck. He’d wait, of course, until Claire set her cup down, and he’d take it to the kitchen, set it carefully out of the way, then he’d circle back to her, stepping sure and steady, like a stalking panther, and he’d take Claire’s face in his wide, glowing hands and--

“Misty!”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t try to play it cool,” Priscilla snapped. She glanced up and down at Misty. “You check your phone in the middle of our conversation and then you zone the hell out for five minutes and you don’t even apologize.”

“Mmm. Sorry.”

“Get that squinty look out of your eyes,” she said. “You in the room with me yet?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, and she was, back with the speckled ceiling above her, the radiator rattling in the corner, and a patch of duct tape holding together the old, pleather couch under her palm. “We’re here.”

\---

That night, shortly after Misty had collapsed onto her couch with half a bottle of pinot noir in hand, Claire sent her another picture. The glittering New York skyline from some high-up window this time, nothing Misty hadn’t seen a thousand times. She could just make out Claire’s reflection in the glass, her spindly fingers around the oversized slab of her phone, her downcast eyes, the sunken crease of her lids. Her hair fell in an artful swoop across her shoulder and her lips were painted dark. In the background-- time was almost up, and Misty didn’t want this one to disappear before she had a chance to dive fully in. One finger on the home button, one on the lock button-- Oh, shit, she locked her phone screen.

She closed her eyes, tried to hold the image in her head.

The view was standard, but the low-lit, sparkling background laid out behind Claire suggested something else. Claire and Luke were probably in a quiet corner of one of those nice restaurants on Lenox, their table a little bit cramped, but out of view of the other patrons and with all of New York at their feet. Murmured conversations, clinking silverware, a string quartet playing quietly, everything a dim orangey-brown from the shaded lights. Claire sat nestled against the wall, a jumble of limbs sitting pretty in a dress that hugged parts of her body she was not used to showing. Across from her, Luke leaned forward over the table, wearing a collared button-down shirt he bought cheap, because that man could go through shirts like no one else.

When you first met Claire, when you first saw her even gaze and her well-worn flannels, you wouldn’t think of her as the type of woman who knew how to wrap folks around her finger, even as pretty as she was. But that would be before she ordered wine, before she looked at you over the edge of her glass, before she leaned in to dip the back of her spoon in your dish, just to try the gravy, she’d say, and before she’d move her tongue along the shell of the spoon, eyes on you. And Luke, glowing still, a strange, proud smirk on his face, would marvel at how a woman can put a spoon in her mouth and seem to shake the foundations of the very earth.

They’d go home afterwards, probably Claire’s apartment, since Luke was living out of that beat and battered building. He’d lay back for her on her fresh white sheets, and she, wine-drunk and sated, the taste of roast lamb and gravy at the back of her mouth, she would pick each straining button of his shirt until he lay spread open before her. Her hands, spread across his dark chest and sinking in like cedar roots. Her dress, rising up, her heavy thighs growing longer and longer inch by sliding inch.

Misty stopped. Shook herself.

When she’d collected herself again, returned fully from squinty headspace she’d fallen into, she sent back a picture of her own. She turned on all the lights, arranged her hair just so, then sat in a careful non-pose to take a picture of the view from her window.

\---

No picture of Claire or Luke prompted it the next time, which was worrying. It took only a single frame of surveillance footage: a tall, bulky brother in a hoodie chatting with the cashier, going blurry with frenzied motion as two other men walked in.

"How did he know they were going to rob the place?” her partner asked.

Misty didn’t know. She tried to place herself there, put the aisles at her back, the entrance to her left, and the cashier at her front, but she ended up in front of the cash register at Pop’s, shattered glass at her feet and a solid presence at her back. Destroyed and redone a hundred times, the place still smelled like hair. The gaping hole at the front of the store let loose the dry, staticky air that usually permeated the salon and replaced it with the cold, wet grip of a Harlem winter. A foot shifted behind her, crushing more glass beneath it, and the man looming behind her lowered his face to be level with hers. He opened his mouth by her ear, and said,

“Did you solve our case?”

“Wha--?” Misty jerked up. “What?”

“Whenever you do that,” he flapped his hand at his face, squinted, “that thing, you solve it.”

“You interrupted me,” she said, ignoring the heat in her cheeks. Her desk chair creaked as she swivelled to face the photo spread. “I’ll get it next round.”

\---

Standing outside a potential crime scene, waiting for the coroner, Misty got a snap from Claire. Purple icon in front of Claire’s name this time, a video, apparently: a few wavering seconds of the cold blue sky pierced by white rays of sunlight before the video cut to Claire’s face. She squinted into the camera and smiled. Misty took a screenshot, successfully this time. Claire panned the camera to Luke. His mouth moved--no sound, Misty fumbled for the volume--and he smirked. The camera panned back to Claire, Luke cheesing in the corner of the frame, and Misty heard her say, “--this corny--” and she took another screenshot before the video ended.

The sky where she was was equally cold, the sun equally bright. She swiped back and forth between the two screenshots she took and thought of Claire, huddled in the shadow of Luke’s broad chest to look at the screen of her phone without the glaring sun obfuscating it. Luke, was he impatient or happy to humor her? Probably a bit of both, eager to get wherever they were going, Claire’s mother’s restaurant, a friend’s lunch, a super villain’s hideout, Luke’s bed, wherever, but also happy to see her made happy. He’d place a hand at the small of her back to pull her in closer and settle his chin in her hair. She’d smell clean, not perfumed. Unscented soap, and the smell of _her_. She’d shrug out of his grip easily when she finished, mumbling, “thanks, babe,” and she’d hook two cold fingers around his to lead him down the street. He’d smile after her, plodding along as he tried to look at her back and keep up with her at the same time.

“You’re like Raven.”

“What?”

Her partner again, pulling gloves on and glaring at the potential crime scene. “Like on _That’s So Raven_ ,” he said.

“And how am I like Raven?”

“You look at the viewers,” he demonstrated, turning his face in a random direction. “And a vision just pops into your heads.”

“‘Heads.’ Plural. As in me and the viewers’ heads. Am I getting that right?”

“Hey, I’m not the psychic here.”

“Me neither, Eddie.”

“Like _Ed, Edd n Eddy_?”

“No, dumbass, like Raven’s goofy friend.”

He shrugged. “I can live with that. But if you’re not the psychic and I’m Eddie, then wouldn’t that make you the ditzy friend?”

She laughed. “Shut up, man.”

\---

Misty had only twice imagined Claire and Luke fucking, which was goddamn impressive considering they fit the physiques of half of the porn she watched and Claire was now sending her upwards of five pictures a day. Perhaps worse though, Misty had imagined them nearly fucking--Claire boxed against the wall, leaning her head on the inside of Luke’s muscled forearm, her fingers pulling at the hem of her shirt; or, Claire sitting upright on the couch, Luke kneeling at her feet, peeling her pants past her hips; or, Luke pulling Claire into the alley behind the laundromat, their lips pressed eagerly together, their roaming hands warm and still smelling of dryer fluff; or, spread across clean sheets, Luke with his face in Claire’s bare belly, mouth open but not-- _ahem_.

Misty had imagined that more times than she could count.

Claire sent her so many pictures, and a mind like Misty’s had enough to fill in the blanks. She was stupid glad she had never invited Luke to her place; she would have never been able to stop imagining them. Harlem was not as big as she sometimes thought it was, and each corner she turned held something familiar, to her or to them.

Standing on a street corner across from headquarters, she could see them, underneath the tree outside of Starbucks, both of them with their hoods up, hands in their pockets, chins pointed down in the cold. Claire held a crinkly pastry bag up in one hand while she dug through her purse. Every couple seconds, Luke would try to dig in her bag to break pieces of her pumpkin bread off for himself. He’d try to be sneaky about it, even though he knew Claire wouldn’t mind. Claire pulled something out of her purse and smiled. When she glanced up, she looked-- looked at Misty? Claire pulled away from Luke, glancing hastily down the street before she crossed.

“Hey,” Claire said. Pieces of her hair flew into her face in the cold wind, and she kept scrunching up her nose as if she could clear them away like that. Behind her, Luke jogged across the street. They smelled warm, the two of them, like coffee and butter and cream.

Damn. Misty straight up thought she was imagining them.

“Hey yourself,” she said.

Luke said, “I hear you’ve been liking Claire’s snapshots.”

“It’s called Snapchat, babe.”

“Snapchats,” Luke repeated.

“Yeah, it's an interesting app, I guess,” Misty said, aiming for casual.

“Claire tells me you screenshot a fair few of her pictures.”

“What?” Anxiety spiked in her chest. “How do you know?”

“I figured you didn’t know,” Claire said, nonsensically. “Here, let me show you.” She took out her phone--when had she shattered the screen?--and swiped across Misty’s name to reveal her and Misty’s shared Snapchat history. Misty’s name appeared many times, like she was the one sending the lion’s share of the pictures, which Misty knew wasn't right. She leaned in closer.

_Misty Knight took a screenshot!_

Oh, shit.

“Oh, shit,” said Misty.

Claire shrugged. “It’s really no big deal.”

“This is why I don’t do these tech things,” Misty said. She clutched her stomach, could practically feel snakes of anxiety and guilt coiling under the surface. They couldn't know what she’d been doing with those pictures, surely. Except maybe if they got in contact with the psychic setting up in Greenwich Village, then--

“Really, it’s fine,” Claire said. She put her hand on Misty’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t’ve kept sending you pictures if I didn’t like that you were screenshotting them. It’s not embarrassing.”

“I think I’ll reserve the right to decide if I’ve done something embarrassing,” Misty said. “And this is damn embarrassing.”

Luke raised his eyebrows at Claire. Claire removed her hand from Misty’s shoulder. When he asked Misty, “Do you want to come over Thursday?” Claire’s eyebrows shot up. Misty’s too.

“You got a case for me?”

“Not for work. For pleasure,” Luke said. Misty’s mouth dropped open.

“I’ve got work till late Thursday,” she said.

“Sunday?” Claire said. Misty’s eyebrows inched further up her forehead.

“Um,” she said, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Luke had this pleased look about him, like he won something he had been expecting for a while. Claire at least looked genuine. Hopeful, even. It would probably be a bad idea to go and learn the minute details of an apartment she already imagined so vividly, but she wanted to know what Luke’s raised eyebrows meant, wanted to see the two of them as they were in private.

“We’d love to have you,” Claire said. Luke’s pleased look grew more intense. Misty squinted at him.

“Okay,” she said at last.

Claire smiled. “Okay, great.”

“Fantastic,” Luke said.

\---

Claire and Luke cooked, apparently. Nothing particularly fancy, and kind of a mish-mash meal, slow-cooked pulled pork, Spanish rice, and a fresh vegetable salad. That should have come up in their pictures, Misty thought, but Luke wes wearing a new shirt, hole-free, and Claire had mascara on. Misty hid a smile behind her glass of wine. Realizing what this likely meant, maybe she shrugged out of her jacket a little suggestively, and maybe, when they weren’t looking, she unbuttoned her henley a little further.

Claire’s apartment, a studio, was smaller than she imagined. They sat around a square table pushed against the window sill so that it could only seat three. While they ate, they talked easily, Claire gazing out the window mostly, occasionally slanting her eyes towards Luke or Misty, Luke gazing intently at Misty and Claire both. Misty took in details: four pairs of shoes, lined up by the doorway, one pair much larger than the other three; an unwashed plate on the coffee table, a single shallow bowl next to the sink; on the countertop, a squat vase filled with dandelions, each at a different stage of wilting. Claire had breezy, peach-colored curtains pulled aside, the apparent source of the peach tint in many of her photos. The apartment had the clean smell of nothing which permeated all of Claire’s belongings. It smelled, too, like Claire and Luke.

After they all ferried their dishes into the kitchen, Misty watched them settle, Claire naturally taking the foot of her bed, and Luke a seat on the threadbare sofa.

“Come sit with me,” Claire said, and for a moment, Misty didn’t move, certain Claire was speaking to Luke. But Claire was looking directly at her, and she was here, really. She felt the urge to say so out loud. Instead, she moved, sat with Claire on the foot of her bed, on the sheets where Misty had imagined her undressing her boyfriend just days ago. The excitement in her chest and between her legs came from the wine, Misty tried to tell herself, not from any actual arousal. Red wine always did this to her, she thought, rubbing her thighs together slightly.

While Luke set about getting some music playing, Claire lay back on the bed, arms folded behind her head. Her shirt, an old grey flannel, rose up to reveal the ridge of a hip bone. Claire pulled at Misty’s fingers until Misty lay down on the bed too. The music started playing, a deep, rolling beat. Claire ran her fingers over Misty’s. She had firm hands and very short nails, Misty noted. Significantly short. Maybe nurses needed short nails. Or maybe, Misty thought, looking at Claire’s perfectly shaped mouth, maybe she’s intending something here.

Misty was never one to shy away from the unknown.

By the time she left, Misty wasn’t sure who started it, who leaned forward and who waited, but she learned, unexpectedly, some new information. She did know what Claire’s mouth tasted like, how she smiled into her kisses, the way her tongue felt sliding against her own. She knew how Claire sounded, kissed breathless, asking,

“This okay?”

And Misty had hummed back, lost somewhere between here and the place in her mind where everything was richer in color and taste. She had tested Claire’s mouth again, lingeringly, and found it soft, sweet.  

Now, saying goodbye and nudging her shoes back on, she glanced behind Claire to see Luke looking at her with dark eyes, eyes with intent.

She stood in the elevator, her hair out of shape and her lips still full and wet, and found herself almost disappointed. What had those eyes intended?

\---

Misty sent Claire a picture. She had gone to the drug store and gotten a shimmery plum lip gloss, shadowed her eyes with bronzer, and brushed through her lashes with her high end mascara. She waited until the sun had dropped halfway and then she stood in front of her window and saw her perfectly lit face reflected on her screen and felt ridiculous. Her picture was bomb though. 

She called Claire later, when she felt sure she had seen the picture. “Let me take you somewhere nice,” she said, and Claire, half laughing and half rolling her eyes, agreed. Misty called Luke too. “I’m taking you and your girl out,” she said.

“I know,” he said, so cocksure that she could hear his smirk through the phone.

She planned the date meticulously, but when it did happen, when they sat across from her at a nice restaurant, and when they followed Misty to her apartment and she nudged them to her bed, she remembered very little of it. Time moved too quickly, there was never enough time to catch the details like she wanted to.

But she did remember the curve of Luke’s muscled back as he leaned over Claire in the doorway to Misty’s apartment. She remembered his eyes flicking hungrily to Misty’s, and she remembered the pounding in her chest, between her legs. Then, later, in her bedroom, the smell of him when he crossed over to her, clean, not as aggressively masculine as before. She pressed her fingers into his arms, and his skin felt like he’d just stepped out of a long, hot shower. Soft, soft, unmarred and buttery smooth. His lips, soft too, without urgency, not like the last time.

Claire appeared behind her, from where she couldn’t remember. Her hand settled on the small of Misty’s back and her lips found their way to her neck. Misty broke off from Luke, turning eagerly in Claire’s trailing hands and into the slow pull of Claire’s lips. Claire stroked her face with her thumb as she kissed her, her mouth slow but implacable, her coarse fingers gone gentle.

She remembered Luke, lying shirtless on her bed, under a shaft of light from the window from the orange streetlights outside, striking a rectangle of warm light across his glowing chest.

“Go for it,” Claire said, starting to undress herself, her fingers hooked into her skirt to inch it past her hips.

Misty crawled over Luke on hands and knees, he watched her, boldly content. She clicked her tongue, said, “You on top.” He raised his eyebrows. “Time for you to pull your own weight.”

Claire laughed, and Luke smirked, ever-confident, and wrapped his arms around Misty, flipped her over, rolled his hips into the tight space where the inflexible fabric of her dress strained across her open legs. She let him try to pull the dress down instead of up, his hands lingered at her hips, one pulling roughly at the tight waist, one anchored on the sweaty arch of her back. Finally, she relented. “Up, baby,” she said. “Pull it up.”

He got it off, she fumbled for the condoms in her nightstand, and then he fucked her. But she couldn’t remember or if he kissed her neck or her mouth, or if he just leaned close and stroked her clit, or if he planted his hands on either side of her head and loomed above, or if he closed his eyes or locked eyes with her. All she remembered was the smooth stretch and slick pressure when he first slid in, and the feeling of his skin as her nails dug into his ass, and Claire lying next to her, sucking again at her neck. And Misty remembered the breathless moment she came, her lips pressed against Luke’s sweaty shoulder. He rocked into her a little longer while she lay twitchy and panting with aftershocks, until he shuddered with the fullness of his thighs pressed to hers.

She pressed her fingers into Claire, after, with Claire laying naked between her and Luke. Misty watched closely, worked out a pattern Claire liked, and pulled back from it once, twice, when Claire’s back arched and her rib cage began to rise and fall with her heaving breaths. Claire curled a loose hand around Misty’s wrist, and her grip remained gentle even when Misty denied her. Just before Claire’s back started to arch again, Luke tapped Misty’s hip, where his hand rested, and nodded at her. Luke scooted down, pressed his lips to Claire’s breast, swept his thumb across the other, let his fingers drape over her ribs. Misty kept her pace, and finally Claire came, beatific, her mouth open around a happy, shaky sigh.

Standing again by the door the next morning, while Claire and Luke pulled their shoes on, Misty wished she remembered more. Luke shrugged his jacket on, pulled his hoodie up, deepening the shadows under his eyes. She thought about touching the fragile skin there, wondered if she did, last night. Claire draped a scarf over her shoulders, flipped her hair out of it. Misty remembered curling a fist around the ends of her hair towards the end, but she couldn’t remember how it felt between her fingers. She wished she had more time to take in the details.

Of course, she reasoned, taking Claire’s hair between her two fingers, there will be more details to catch and to miss, next time.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments are much appreciated!!


End file.
